Scientific approaches to technological officiating aids in game sports

Abstract

a b S t R ac tAn increasing number of game sports use technological officiating aids to support their umpires and referees. The aim of this review is to survey the respective literature to extract universal issues of these aids, which are used in different ways in a wide range of settings. We identified 23 studies, of which the majority was published in the current decade. These studies embraced, beside empirical works, contributions of the fields of philosophy and jurisprudence. Based on the approaches and findings of the selected studies we identified seven major issues: the underlying phenomena, usage patterns, accuracy, standard of review, influence on the nature of the game, material as well as immaterial costs and the amount of authority that is granted to the officiating aid. Further, we found regularly some overlapping between these issues, but also that some matters of interest have not been addressed so far, for example studying the influence of technological officiating aids on stakeholders' opinions. Empirical as well as theoretical evaluations of technological officiating aids have to deal with this complexity. As this seems to be neglected currently, we suggest that further studies should show awareness of this in their approaches as well as in their conclusions.

Implementation of the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) as a Career Change-Event: The Israeli Premier League Case Study

“…Finally, there were no significant changes in the number of penalties or red cards per match (Lago-Peñas et al, 2019). It was further proposed that using technological officiating aids in sport might undermine the authority of the referee, interfere with the flow of the match, and even create injustice when on-field decisions are overruled by the video review (Kolbinger and Lames, 2017). Moreover, better visual coverage of the field and match events can result in detecting more minor incidents, previously overlooked by referees, players, and fans.…”

“…Moreover, better visual coverage of the field and match events can result in detecting more minor incidents, previously overlooked by referees, players, and fans. This can be considered as one of the potential threats of including such a technology aid (Kolbinger and Lames, 2017;de Dios Crespo, 2020).…”

“…As such, its introduction presented major modifications in the way referees train, prepare for, and officiate matches (Armenteros and Webb, 2020;Fernández Ruiz et al, 2020) as well as in refereeing psychology (de la Vega and Fuentes, 2020). Furthermore, Kolbinger and Lames (2017) reviewed the literature regarding the use of technological officiating aids in various game sports. They identified seven major issues: the underlying phenomena, usage patterns, accuracy, standard of review, influence on the nature of the game, material as well as immaterial costs, and the amount of authority that is granted to the officiating aid.…”

A closer look at the prevalence of time rule violations and the inter-point time in men’s Grand Slam tennis

“…This does not necessarily mean that the cost for the offending player should be raised, for example if the on-field stakeholders perceive the current penalty as overcompensatory. In addition, the ITF could introduce some kind of technological officiating aid to enforce the rule (Kolbinger and Lames, 2017), for example a shot clock that automatically defines dynamic time limits based on tracking data. Both these interventions do not rule out changes of the time limit and vice versa.…”

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“…In their review about technological umpiring aids for referees Kolbinger & Lames, (2017) discussed potential issues future empirical studies will need to manage. Therefore, their review was an important first step for further investigations.…”